Re-envisioning "Communities": Adapting the Champion Communities (CC) approach to engage at-risk populations such as men who have sex with men (MSM) and commercial sex workers (CSW) in urban settings in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

In the DRC, HIV/AIDS prevalence rates in urban areas are twice as high as those in rural areas (1.9% versus 0.8%); rates among at-risk populations such as MSM and CSW are even more significant. As of 2013 MSM had a HIV/AIDS rate of 13.8%, more than ten times the national rate.

Since 2009, the USAID-funded DRC Integrated HIV/AIDS project (ProVIC) has used the Champion Community (CC) model to link the community and the health facility and to empower communities to self-organize, self-assess, and plan community-level responses to HIV/AIDS. The model includes self-elected steering committees of representatives from diverse sectors and has proven most successful in rural environments with strong traditional leadership structures; CC implementation is more challenging in urban environments where populations are transient. 

ProVIC adapted the CC to fit urban environments by broadening the definition of "community" to include communities of at-risk populations. For example, to reach stigmatized MSM in the capital of Kinshasa, ProVIC developed a CC of 300 MSM, represented by a steering committee of four MSM community leaders. The CC developed an action plan and mapped points frequented by MSM. 30 MSM volunteers were trained and deployed with HIV prevention messages. The CC led awareness and communication activities, and identified and publicized health facilities which welcomed MSM. A health referral and counter-referral system was put in place between the CC and health facilities to monitor HIV/AIDS services to MSM. In all, using the adapted CC approach, ProVIC provided prevention messaging and support to 1,519 MSM in Kinshasa.